Girl of Many Stories

Angelique was 14 when she fell in love for the first time. The object of her affection was 17 and played on the varsity football team. They met in a coffee shop while studying for her English midterm. Like any good meet-cute, she dropped something, and he stopped to pick it up. When their eyes met and he smiled, she just knew.

Fast forward a month and she was sitting on cold bleachers watching a game she had never been interested in before, surrounded by the crowd and alone, but her eyes on him. Liam was tall, dark and handsome. Maybe not in such an obvious way to everyone else, but the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he grinned at her melted her like a scene in a romance novel and made her feel like a princess about to be rescued from small town mediocrity. When things fell apart, as they often do, she buckled down on her school work and threw herself into studying the piano. By the time she graduated, she had a 4.0 and a scholarship to Jakob's School of Music in Ohio.

Angel fell in love for the 2nd time her freshman year of college. Eric was a teaching assistant and grad student in her Intro to Music Theory class. His 23 to her almost 19 didn't feel like much of a gap at all to either of them. He wasn't tall or dark, but he was delicate and sensitive and beautiful. His eyelashes were long enough to strike envy in the heart of any woman and his hair fell carelessly over one eye often enough that it had to be intentional. His smile was smaller and shier but somehow having to earn it made it so much more impactful for her. After a few months, Eric was advised that relationships with undergrads wouldn't look good on his application to PhD programs, so he tearfully broke it off with her in a letter 6 pages long and promised to never forget her.

By the time Angie was 20, she had sworn off love for good. The fall felt amazing but the crash didn't seem worth it at all. She joined a sorority and changed the way she dressed, hoping to lose herself in a crowd and friendships, and fun with women her age. She attended parties and overslept through early morning classes, eventually losing her scholarship. She decided a career in music wasn't for her, anyways and switched majors to Event Planning on the main school campus at Ohio Southern University. The classes were easier and the sommelier course she took shortly after turning 21, not only allowed but encouraged drinking on campus. Her laugh had changed, her hair had changed and so had her outlook. She went on dates, but never more than 3 with the same guy, discarding college boys like used napkins, which worked pretty well for the frat guys she hung out with as well.

When she graduated in May at 22, she took a job at a local hotel so she could stay close to her friends, but the hours were awful and the entry-level position made her an overworked personal assistant at best and a glorified janitor at worst. She started to wonder if she had made a mistake in degrees and her frustration grew as her friends moved away to bigger cities and better jobs. They started to get engaged and then married and slowly lost touch.